Into the Fields

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Matthew 9:37-38 ESV

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are farmers. Currently, they’re right in the middle of harvest.

From sun up to sun down, they will be working the fields. They just finished wheat, and soybeans are coming in the next couple of weeks.

We won’t see much of them for awhile.

It would be much easier for them to stay inside. It would be a lot less work to ignore the crop.

However, to accomplish their mission, they absolutely must get into the fields and do the work.

It means discomfort. It means long days. It means hard work. 

To ignore the harvest is to allow the crop to die. And ultimately, ignoring the harvest is to allow their family to die; they depend on it.

The harvest is of utmost importance and it would be absolutely ridiculous to ignore the crop they’ve worked so hard to produce.

And sadly, this describes many Christians.

We pray for salvations. We pray for laborers. We even pray for opportunities to share the Good News.

But how often do we ignore the harvest?

How many social groups have we been a part of that have been EXCLUSIVELY Christian by accident?

We do so much prep work for our harvest, but when it’s time to do the work do we sit in idle complacency?

Recently, my wife and I have started being very intentional about reaching out to people who would never come to church.

It’s messy, it’s hard, and it’s not comfortable. We had a crisis recently when someone we were trying to minister to stole jewelry from my wife’s jewelry box.

Our Christian friends would never have done that. But our Christian friends don’t need saving anymore (Mark 2:17).

God hasn’t called us to idleness when there’s a harvest ready to be yielded.

God has called us to get out into the fields and yield the crop that He is preparing.

Is it time to burst your safety zone of exclusive Christian fellowship and get into the fields?